Smiley and frowny faces

I got to thinking about this when I was grading a round of quizzes. One of my students had written "I didn't study" on the top of her quiz and drawn a frowny face. (And yeah, her performance kind of bore that out).

What I wondered about was: do teachers still draw frowny and smiley faces on student papers? When I was a kid it was fairly common practice (at least, smiley faces were. I guess some students did get frowny faces...) Or has that gone the way of lots of other things that could be seen as "mean" or "exclusionary"?

I will say that for some kids, frowny faces would not be a good motivator. I know for me they would not have been; if I did poorly on an assignment or quiz, even as a fairly young student, I would have felt bad enough about it without the added insult of a frowny face. Too many of those and I'd start to hate the teacher and hate the subject. Or are some students motivated by them? Or do some students need them, do some need the emphasizing that their behavior is not up to par?

(Perhaps that's why so much of the "health news" - lots of which sounds like nannying to me - infuriates me so much and doesn't seem to bother some other people. Perhaps there are people who are really unaware that exercise is good for you, and so, while I am snarling at the television, "What? Do you now want me to do TWO hours a day? When exactly am I supposed to sleep?!?!" there may be people that the message doesn't get through to. (Though a second question arises: how much is it the responsibility of the news media for the populace to "be healthy"? I would say almost none, aside from reporting about things like disease outbreaks or food recalls....)

I don't know. I've never drawn a frowny face on a student paper. Once or twice, in rare occasions, when it was a class I could joke around with AND someone earned a 100% on an exam (which is really rare in my classes), I'd draw a smiley face on it, partly to be funny (they are adults and should not need that motivation).....but that's rare, as I said.

Amazon: doin' it right

I know there are people out there who don't like Amazon for various reasons, but I love them. And I realized two more reasons why I love them:

1. Now, for many of the things you order, there is a link to tracking information right on the e-mail confirmation. No copying and pasting 12-digit alphanumeric things onto the UPS or USPS website - just click and it tells you where your package is.

2. Even better - I realized the other day lots of places I've ordered from (a couple online fabric shops, Caswell-Massey, and some of the gourmet food places), unless you specifically opt out of e-mails, they will e-mail you EVERY STINKING DAY practically, to remind you they're there. And Amazon doesn't.

Look, Caswell-Massey - yes, I shower regularly but it takes me some time to use up soap. Same thing with talc, even though it's eleventy-hundred degrees here in the summer and I need it so I can feel a bit fresher during the day (though I am probably more like one of Harper Lee's "teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum" by the end of the day). I don't need you to e-mail me regularly and say "Hey, hey, I'm still here! Hey, hey, want to order something from me?" It's like having emotionally needy friends.

Yeah, I have to go through and find the opt-out screens for a bunch of those sites and just prune the danged advertising e-mails I get (about 5/6 of the e-mail I receive....).

Amazon doesn't do that. They e-mail me when I've ordered something, they e-mail me when the thing has shipped, they e-mail me if I've sent someone a gift - but other than that, they leave me be. They don't send out weekly mailings with some kind of minimal percentage off to tempt me into buying. They know that I know they're there; they don't need to expend energy in reminding me.

(Frankly, I think way WAY way too many companies have bought into the "Constant Contact" model of business, where they have been told that customers won't use them unless said customers are constantly reminded of the business' presence - or that customers are so needy and desirous of attention that they need coddling every day.

"Call the midwife"

I've been watching this show (it's a British import, on PBS) off and on for a couple of months. (Off, because I am not home some nights when it's on, and also sometimes I am involved in doing something and I forget).

I like it, even as there are things about it that annoy me. (The "free contraception is a necessity" subtext of one episode, for example - the whole "here's an issue we're going to slip in and make it very palatable and appealing to people because it involves a sympathetic character." Maybe not the issue so much per se, but my feeling that my emotions are being manipulated in a certain way, that annoys me. While the "issues" aren't as heavy-handed as in some shows, they're still there). Still, I like it, partly because it's set in a time and a place (largely working-class Britain in the 1950s) that I know little about. And I enjoy this kind of show - which largely focuses on people doing their jobs, and what those jobs entail - more than shows like "Downton Abbey" that has a lot of rich-people-being-idle in it. (Some of my friends are really into Downton Abbey but I just can't get into it. Perhaps you have to have been watching it from the outset - I don't know who most of the characters are or why I should care about them).

But I do think the "doing useful work" vs. "being largely idle" distinction makes a difference for me - in the novels I read, I find the ones where people have careers they go about more interesting than the rich-idle-person novels.

I don't know if this one rises to something I want to own on dvd. (Yes, I know, many services have it available as streaming online, but I never bought a Roku box sort of thing (figuring I'd have to get a service call from the Creepy Techs at my cable company to help set it up) and my home internet connection gets slow and flakey at the end of the day, so....I'd almost rather shell out the $30 for a season's worth on dvd.)

I think part of what I like about the show is how the midwives, by and large, make the best of a bad lot - the difficulties in their lives, the challenges of living in just-shortly-postwar Britain (I think food rationing had probably ended just a couple years before the series is set, if I remember correctly). Dealing with really difficult people - the women they serve, and their husbands and other relatives, often tend to be the sort of people that Jesus talked about "loving your neighbor (even when it's bloody difficult)" about. (And some of the nuns - the midwives work out of a hospital staffed by nuns - are also rather difficult people.)

I may also find it interesting in that a number of the women I knew growing up had worked as nurses. Some of them were of the era where you were fired (! yes, forced to stop working) upon marriage; others were still working as nurses.

But I do tend to find shows like this -set in a different place and time - more interesting to me than the average sitcom or legal drama that's on the airwaves otherwise.

(I guess my viewing habits are strange: 1/3 or more cartoons, a few news and commentary shows, a few cooking shows, and then stuff like Call the Midwife.....there are whole shows on the major networks that I've never seen, and when someone mentions them, I'm like "that's a show?" Television has really changed since I was a kid and we got something like four or five different stations and cable and satellite were for "rich folks.")

It would be interesting

If it weren't so sad and scary.

I mean, the current big big scandal, the one involving the place sometimes called no such agency, and the fact that they allegedly now know that I've called my dad on my cell phone while doing my taxes in order to have a bitch session about how awful the IRS instructions are, and how they should just get rid of it and replace it with a flat tax....

But if it weren't so scary, it would be interesting. I have friends from all sides of the political spectrum who are outraged about this, who are either aghast that their government would do something, or who knew it all along and this is just proof. And apparently the ACLU is involved. And some commentators are saying it's not such a big deal - and again, it's people on different sides of the spectrum.

(FWIW: I objected to warrantless surveillance under Bush and I still object to it today. It totally shreds the presumption of "innocent until proven guilty" and it could be construed as a violation of the fourth amendment)

And I know, some folks are arguing, "But we don't have an oppressive government, so if you're not breaking laws, you don't have to worry" but I would at a big YET to a couple points in that statement....we never know what the future holds, and who knows? If there's someone in the IRS who allegedly thinks it's a good idea to move slowly and keep asking for more and more intrusive information on particular groups asking for tax-exempt status, or perhaps even to reveal the names of certain political donors - well, surely there are other suck ups in other agencies who look at which way the wind is blowing (or their own personal hobby horses) and who decide to play fast and loose with the rules themselves.

Maybe, I don't know, there's someone in the Medicare office who looks at requests for treatment, and drags their feet for someone because, meh, they're old, or meh, they're fat, or meh, they belong to a certain political party? And while I'm sure most people who work for the government offices are reasonably ethical - it just takes one jerk to ruin your whole day.

I don't know. I will say I am increasingly wondering what's going on, and has this been going on since 2001, and is there anything we can do to decrease it?

I know of the argument that it is "keeping us safe." Well, you could also argue that locking every citizen up in a prison cell would end street crime, but there's a point where "safety" becomes so constricting that you cease to desire it....

Spotted at the Target

So I had to run out and do some shopping (bigger than what I can do in town - we have a few decent stores but our grocery choices are not great).

In the process, I went to the Target. Now, it was warm here, but not nearly as hot as it's gonna get. Well, anyway, I wound up parked very near a Toyota Prius. And I noticed something that made me think....the person had left it running, presumably so the AC could stay on and keep the car cool. (My habit, partly because I worry about someone breaking into my car and stealing it, it to always turn it off and take the keys with me. Yes, it sometimes means getting into a hot car but that's kind of life.)

I shrugged, went in and shopped. Some 40 minutes later when I came out, there it still was, still running.

I just hope the owner isn't one of those people - like some hybrid-car owners I've met - who likes to go around lording it over everyone else how much BETTER for the environment his car is....I mean, I suppose it was running off of battery there, but STILL.

trying to get stuff done, ugh.

Summer school is busy. We have a four day week, which means each of those four days has 20% more stuff in it than it does during the regular semester.

ALSO, offices are supposed to be open from 8 am until 6 pm - to get in the 40 hour work week. But a lot of them still have people taking long lunches as I am learning from trying to work on paperwork during my (brief) break between classes.

(Interestingly, there seems to be an inverse relationship between how much someone is paid and how much of their actual "office commitment" they fulfill - so our secretary, who makes fairly low wages, is ALWAYS here, whereas some of the high mucky-mucks pulling down six figures AREN'T. (nor are even their secretaries, apparently)

The classes are going fairly well though I have one person in one of them that I suspect of being a snowflake-in-training: they are going ON VACATION in the middle of the summer semester and are just counting on making up the work. (Including having me write a make-up exam for them).

However, on the upside - one of my colleagues who isn't even TEACHING one of the classes I teach this summer volunteered to set up its lab for me, because she "curates" the material used in it.

How grateful am I for that? SO grateful. It's a smallish thing but it really, really makes my life easier on an otherwise busy day. It's a huge thing to have good colleagues. I don't think I'd still be in academia if it weren't for the colleagues I have. I know there are many departments where there are factions or people who are really hard to work with all the time. We're too small for factions, and the one or two people who tend to having difficult personalities aren't difficult all the time, and their being difficult is less difficult than many of the difficult people I have dealt with over the years. 

More thoughts on MOOCs

(Back, after a travel break. Summer classes start next week.)

I read, in passing, of a school somewhere that wants to offer a "hybrid" degree (part traditional teaching, but largely using these MOOCs - Massive open online courses) that is sharply less expensive than a traditional degree. (More detail: Georgia Tech, the degree is claimed to cost $7000 rather than the $20,000 or some a traditional degree would cost. Not clear what proportion of the coursework is MOOCs) On my own campus, there's a movement afoot to offer a "three year BGS" degree (BGS = Bachelor of General Studies, meaning there is no specific major. When I was a snooty college kid in the STEM field, we used to refer to the BGS majors as "The Future 7-11 Managers of America." Not that there's anything wrong with managing a 7-11, but you shouldn't be spending upwards of $10,000 a year (yes, even back then) at a Public Ivy for it)

I don't know about this. I worry about the idea of making a "second class" of college degrees. From what I have heard of people's experience in MOOCs (students who have taken them, a friend on another campus who is doing one for fun), they are fine for enrichment learning, and they work okay if you are very self-motivated and have the necessary background...but I think any of us who teach know that those students aren't all that common. (And of the ones I've had, in informal conversations? They vastly prefer traditional in-person classes.)

I get that online classes serve a lot of purposes: people in remote areas, people who work odd hours (at least, if it's an asynchronous class you can "attend" at any time), people with medical issues that makes leaving the house difficult, possibly stay-at-home parents....but for the traditional college student, I think there are some hurdles they have to be able to clear.

Way back when, when I was a student, I had to take biochemistry for my degree. (Actually few biology degree programs, unless it's something really jazzy like Biotechnology, seem to require that any more. As an option, yes; as a requirement, no). Anyway, I had two choices: I could take the 15 minute walk three days a week to the med school campus and take a traditional lecture class, or I could do something called "Keller plan" which was, I guess, self-paced with modules you learned from. (Kind of like the old SRA reading program from grade school, at least that was how I envisioned it). I thought about it - hiking a 30 minute round trip early in the morning vs. Keller plan. Ultimately, I went with the med school and the hike. I chose that for a couple of reasons: first, I knew I was going to be busy that semester and with something I was "doing on my own time" it would be far, far too easy to put off doing the "modules" and wind up scrambling at the end of the semester to get done (and thus, not really learn the stuff). And second, I knew if I did the route with "real" professors, if I had a question, I could stop by their office hours. I'm sure there was some kind of help structure built in with the Keller plan class, but I knew about going to office hours and asking questions and was comfortable with that. (It turned out I did not need it; the professors were all excellent and I learned really well from them)

So anyway: if someone with the level of time-management ability and maturity that I had knew she couldn't handle a self-paced course well....

But my concern with these "hybrid" degrees is the impression the schools are giving is that they are just the same as a regular degree - that there's no difference in taking maybe half (I'm guessing here) or more of your classes as MOOCs rather than in-person classes (or even small-format online courses, where the prof behind the computer might have 75-100 students, rather than the thousands that are in a MOOC). I'm guessing "individual attention" totally goes out the window in those cases. And a lot of students need some level of individual attention - I'm not even talking about the students who are "snowflakes" or who have some kind of emotional issues that affect their learning, and who need regular building-up and reassurance from a professorial figure - I mean just your regular, garden-variety, resilient student, they run into problems and need assistance. And I suspect it will be harder to get, and involve more red tape, when the professor "teaching" the class is at a different campus and has thousands of students all over the world....

My worry is, we're going to wind up with "Neiman Marcus Degrees" and "Wal-Mart Degrees." You go to a store like Nieman Marcus, you know you will be spending a lot of money. However, you expect good service and you expect a quality, durable product for what you are paying. You also might expect something a little different, a little more special, than the ordinary. When you go to Wal-Mart, you're going because it's cheap. You know if you need help you probably won't get it (or at least, I have found it very hard to get ANY help when I've needed it). The store might not be as clean as the Neiman-Marcus, it won't be as nicely lit, the music won't be as nice. You know that the product you buy will probably be cheaply made, not last all that well, and it may be made in factories whose labor conditions you'd really prefer not to know about. But it's cheap, and it's quick, and it's all that's available to some people.

The problem is, when someone begins pretending that a....I don't know, a blender....from Wal-Mart is JUST AS GOOD and is TOTALLY EQUIVALENT TO one from Neiman-Marcus. Oh, they both blend and whip and frappe, they both make milkshakes....but maybe the one from Wal-Mart breaks in a year and a half. Or maybe the blades stick after a while.

The problem isn't that there's Wal-Mart and there's Neiman-Marcus, the problem comes when there's nothing in between - no little mom-and-pop stores, no traditional department stores, no appliance stores. So you have the choice: spend a lot of money and get something that is most likely top of the line, or spend much less money and get something that's not that great, but hey, it was cheap. And so we wind up with the few who can afford a pricey degree from a Harvard or some such, and everyone else who has to do most of their coursework as distance-learning as part of an enormous cohort of students.

And while we're not there, I could see that beginning to happen, as smaller schools decide to "outsource" a lot of their subjects to MOOC creators....and the pressure for "cheap" and "fast" degrees grows. (You have heard the old engineering dictum? "You can have something good, fast, or cheap. Pick two." Though more often, it's pick ONE). I just worry that we will wind up with legions of people who earned quickie online degrees, or BGS degrees, and they STILL can't get a job with them....is it really that much less of a waste if you spent three years of your life rather than 4, and $10,000 rather than maybe $25,000?  You still don't have a job....you still might not have the preparation expected.

I'm not saying "don't do this ever," I'm saying "Let's think about this a bit more before we rush headlong into it."

Graduation report

A few things:

1. They didn't send us an e-mail of when and where to show up this year. I thought I was running late when I saw the full parking lots, but I turned out to be one of the first faculty there.

2. The speech was not memorable. A couple moments were, though:

a. Non-traditional (i.e., fortyish) woman student graduating. As she walked across the stage, from out of the stands, a teenaged- or pre-teen- girl voice: "WHOOOO! GO MOM!" Made me smile.

b. Young man walks across the stage, his (large) family (seriously: like fifteen or 20 people, all dressed in identical t-shirts) jumps up and starts cheering and hollering. As he walks back to his seat (with his back to his family but facing the faculty), he facepalms and shakes his head in an "I'm so embarrassed" expression.

c. A young woman in a wheelchair, wearing leg braces, even though they had made the stage fully accessible, got a couple of her friends to lift her up and stand beside her as support so she could actually WALK across the stage (one of the marshals rolled her chair around the back of the stage so she could get back in after she crossed). The "I did it" look on her face was priceless. (And a lot of us were holding our breath, hoping she would make it).

d. A Nepalese student I had in several classes (I think from some things he has said that he is Buddhist) did the traditional "namaste" gesture of respect, very briefly, before the president handed him his diploma. He also did it again walking past some of us who had had him in class.

As much as I bitch on here about some of my students, there are a lot of good and heartwarming things that happen on campus.

Here's hoping summer semester (which starts in 3 weeks) is a good one. (I just found out that I will, in fact, have a TA, and it's likely someone I taught with before who is a good, responsible person)

it's not Friday yet

But here's my FO for the week:

People who always have the need to one-up. To show how they are "better" than you. Or more important. Or that they are "purer" in terms of diet or resource use or not buying things made in sweatshops or God knows what.

Look, I try. I try to be a good person. But dammit, I'm not perfect. I don't need your supposed superiority ground in my face like Jimmy Cagney ground that grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face. Because it hurts and it's not useful to our working relationship and it only makes me think that you are a giant ass for pointing out all the ways you think you are superior. It does NOT make me want to emulate you and go vegan/start writing books instead of doing research/change up what has worked for me in teaching to match what you do/whatever.

Just flip off. I'm tired, I've worked hard this semester, and I just can't deal with your 'tude right now.

Responsibility

I don't carry pencils to final exams any more. I don't carry any writing utensils, for that matter.

Partly because I got sick of losing them - you loan someone a pencil, and unless you are there breathing down their back as they finish up, they often walk off with it. And good pencils (the only kind I will use, and it's increasingly hard to find good pencils, now that Ticonderogas are made in China out of some kind of super-breaky graphite now) aren't cheap.

But there's another issue here: Is it really too much to ask an 18 to 22 year old (or sometimes older) to bring a freakin' pencil with them to the exam? I regularly have people show up to exams with no pens or pencils and frankly, I don't want to give them the test when that happens. Because, how prepared for an exam are you gonna be if you didn't think to bring a  pencil? (These are people who do not ordinarily take notes in class - so they don't show up with notebooks and pencils).

One of the classes I teach gives exams as a Scan-Tron test. This is a Gen Ed class with a common exam, so it has to be machine gradeable. Now, I'm not a huge fan of all-multiple-choice, but it does make the grading easier on me. I tell the students: bring a #2 pencil. I put it on the review sheet: Bring a #2 pencil. I put it up on the class webpage: Bring a #2 pencil.

And I still get people who whip out an ink pen and are set to do the Scan-Tron in ink pen. (Oh hell no. I am NOT hand grading scan trons just because someone didn't have the right writing instrument).

But I mean, really: I grew up reading fairy tales where if you broke one little magical rule, you were in big trouble. Or if you happened to have the right thing at the right time, showing your preparedness, you were rewarded. I also remembered being told the story of how J.C. Penney (the man, the one who founded the store) once hired a person partly on the basis that he bothered to taste his food (during a restaurant meal) before salting it, rather than automatically salting it, and Penney assumed that meant he was a prudent man. And later, I remember the story of - was it AC/DC? - who had the clause in their contract that there were to be no brown M and Ms in the bowls of M and Ms in the dressing room, and the idea was that they could tell at a glance if the other things - safety related things - they asked for had been followed by checking the M and Ms.

So I pretty well learned young that Following the Directions Is a Good Thing. And what's more, when I was a kid, there were consequences: If you showed up without a pencil, there was a good chance you would not be allowed to take the test, and the teacher would brook no whining about it.

But now, sometimes, I feel like people are not allowed to suffer consequences for things - and I wonder if that just leads to an increasing number of bad decisions.

This really frosts me

Numerous colleges and universities - including, if I read the agenda for our faculty meeting this week right, mine - are going to a program of limiting adjunct hours STRICTLY (including grading time and preparation time) so they can duck the provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

This just....I have no words for this. How many colleges agitated for this Act, even though lots of people said there would be bad unintended consequences? Well, we're beginning to see the unintended consequences.

Thank God I got a full-time job when I did; I suspect full-time jobs are going the way of the dinosaur and instead people are going to be working two or three less-than-29-hours-a-week jobs in order to make ends meet.

Also, this probably means our workload will be going up, as we can no longer rely on adjuncts for grading of the hundreds of GenBio lab reports. Oh well. I will give those lab reports all the attention in grading that the students give them in preparing them.

I hope the American public remembers this the next time we get offered a pig in a poke.

Something to take care of

What I really need is something to take care of, something that doesn't talk back or make unreasonable demands. One of the problems I have with other people is that they all too often make what I think are unreasonable demands. (I have spoken before about "ask" vs. "guess" culture - I have a mindset where I feel like if someone asks me to do something, they are actually EXPECTING me to do it, and saying "no" isn't really an option, which is maybe why I get to feeling so put-upon)

Anyway. I went home yesterday afternoon. Put my car away. Realized it had been warm and dry so I went out to the garden. I haven't hooked the hose up yet because we've gotten a few late freezes and it's easier just not to take it out, than it is to have to drain it again and put it away again. So I've been using a watering can on my very small garden. (I have beans, tomatoes, and I planted a few flowers. I'm considering planting something else - either trying a fast crop of lettuce (though it might be too late for that already) or some kind of squash). I filled the can and watered everything, checked over the plants for bugs, noticed that the tomatoes are already flowering (no sign of fruit set yet). And it made me feel better. I like having things to take care of that don't make huge demands on me - all the plants require is water, and occasionally some fertilizer, and removal of the weeds that come up. They don't talk back, they don't need things suddenly at the last minute.

I've said before my gardening-fu is not great enough that I could feed myself off of it (even if it was my only occupation; I know I don't keep up with the garden as well as I might but life gets in the way), but I like pretending that I could. I like the idea of telling the rest of the world to take a flying leap and just taking care of myself, without having to depend on anyone else. I don't know why that is; I don't know if it's because when you depend on someone they can turn and make unreasonable demands of you (or withdraw their help at any time). Or if it's just a stubborn, I-want-to-do-it-myself streak. But I've always kind of been this way - I loved the "Little House" books when I was a kid, with all their descriptions of how to smoke meat and dry fruit. And "My Side of the Mountain," which was about a boy who literally ran away from home and lived off the land. And while I realize I couldn't really do that (I'd probably go running back to civilization as soon as the t.p. ran out, or after realizing there was no way I could make my own chocolate or tea from plants I grew), still, the idea of living off the grid as much as possible has appeal. (I couldn't do it here, at least not utility-wise: I NEED air conditioning in the summer as AFAIK, there is no off-the-grid electrical generation that makes enough power to run that).

I think a big part of it is that I would like to tell the rest of the world, "Go soak your head" (or something stronger) and just go hang out in my garden instead.

And the follies continue.

I had someone "threaten" to lose their crap in my office.

(Yes, I understand that some people really genuinely have emotional issues, but from working with this person before, I get the feeling that they have been patted on the head and told "you're having a panic attack" or "You're so upset right now you can't function" or something every time they got upset over something, so now they believe it, and they use it as a strategy to get what they want. Because people don't like to see people get upset.)

And yes, maybe they do genuinely have problems and I'm being an awful person for my interpretation, but you know, I'm tired. I'm tired of always having to suck it up and be the big tough grownup who puts up with everything. This is someone who, literally every time I have dealt with them, has some HUGE PROBLEM that usually can only be fixed by me bending my rules or putting myself out.

I'm just fed up with it. I've had too many people over the years who have been enabled to use "difficult" or unpleasant behavior with others as a way of getting what they want. It's manipulative and unpleasant and I don't like it. I admit, the threatened "losing their stuff" is not as unpleasant and ugly as some student behavior  that I've had to put up with over the years, but still: I told the person in question that the problem they were presenting was fixable, I told them how it could be fixed, I told them it was okay, that they could go and fix it, that they were capable of fixing it....I am at the limit of my sympathy.

(Part of this is when I'm distressed, I have precious few people I feel I can turn to for some shoring-up. I may NEED it but I seldom GET it.)

Why am I doing this? Why did I go into this career? I hate dealing with people. I especially hate dealing with people who have been taught dysfunctional ways of dealing with other people or with the challenges of life. How are you going to make it in the world if every small thing makes you fall apart? I hope you have a strong spouse to shore you up. And yeah,. okay. I'm an awful person for saying that. But in some ways, I AM an awful person. I have certain things I am very intolerant of and people wanting to shove their personal problems on to me is one of them. Part of this is sheer jealousy: I have no one, NO ONE I can shove my problems on to. I have to deal with them all myself. Even logistic crap like getting the gutters fixed, I have to keep harassing the repair guy until he's arsed to show up. I don't have anyone to be my "muscle," I can't walk into the repair guy's office and start crying at him how it's UNFAIR he keeps me waiting. I just have to deal with it. And I'm damn tired of dealing with it. If my car gets a flat, I have to change it myself. If I run out of food at home, even if it's a Friday afternoon on the first of the month, I have to venture out to the gee-dee'd Wal Mart to get food - or go hungry.

I'm NOT a nice person, I am only good at pretending to be one. I know that because I cannot feel loving and gracious towards people who make my life more difficult because they don't have their stuff together. I know I'm supposed to go "Oh, that's OK" but even as I SAY it I am seething inside because, once again, I will have to spend more time doing stuff I'd rather not do.

TL:DR: I'm tired and fed up and have no one to help me but I have seemingly hundreds of people nibbling at my elbow wanting me to help them. And I know the Christian thing IS to help them, but dammit, I don't WANT to.

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggghhhhhh.

This is our last week of classes. I collect a major paper in one class today, and lab books in another class today. So far I have had no freaked-out phone calls or e-mails about the paper (but that's my mostly-diligent class), so I'm hopeful there.

But the lab books.....a guy just stopped by wanting copies of all the lab exercises because he "didn't keep" his. I hope he kept a record of the results but I know some of the students in that class just write the results on their lab exercises.

Then he asked me: "So.....when are these due again?"

TODAY.

THEY ARE DUE TODAY.

WHAT HAVE I BEEN TELLING THE CLASS FOR THE PAST THREE WEEKS. THEY ARE DUE TODAY.

I swear, I am leaving campus at 3 pm to start grading my humongous papers, if I don't have all the lab books by then, too bad, so sad.

"Manatee gray"

There's a story making the rounds about two dresses sold online by Target.

The standard-sized one, in a gray color, was described as "charcoal."

The plus-sized one, identical in every way but size, was described as "manatee gray."

People were outraged. Target was attacked online, they took the description down with a mealy-mouthed, "Must have been a mistake; we have some seasonal items sold that are that color"


You know what? I can't be angry about this. Yes, I'm a bigger woman. Maybe not quite plus size these days (I am not sure how Target's sizing on this particular dress runs). But I'm far from being size 6.

And you know? I don't freakin' care if some intern somewhere wants to get his laughs off by referring to the colors of the clothes I would buy using terms to refer to large mammals. It's dumb, and it's juvenile, and it doesn't warrant me being bugged by. The fact that someone, somewhere, may have thought it was funny to refer to a plus-size dress as being the same color as a manatee tells me more about them than it tells me about the women who would wear that dress.

And at any rate: from everything I've read, manatees are pretty nice animals. They're slow moving and peaceable, they take good care of their offspring. They don't attack other animals.

Elephants, also: elephants are smart. They are excellent parents, and even the extended family gets involved. Elephants also appear to mourn their dead - suggesting they might have a higher level of emotional consciousness than the sort of people who think it's funny to compare a fat woman to an elephant.

So, I would just look at someone referring to me as a "manatee" or an "elephant" with a certain amount of pity, and think, "Really? That's the best you've got?"

What bugs me far more are the people who go all concern troll-y about heavy people. Here's a hint: We know we're overweight. You can't go to the doctor even to get a vaccination without them weighing you. And some doctors will deliver a lecture every time. (And it may become mandated that they do, under the new health-care laws: right before the talk about "Yeah, it's really okay for us to arrange to end your life for you if you get too old or too sick").

If weight loss were easy (and physiologically possible, in some cases - like that of people on long-term prednisone therapy), we'd lose weight. Just to shut your sorry asses up.

But it's not that simple.

But I'm not stupid. My carrying around an extra 20-50 pounds (depending on what standards you go by) does not short-circuit my brain. I don't need someone to tell me what I should and should not eat. I do not need someone to pretend to "care" about me when they really just want to control me.

I would allow my family to "concern troll" me, but they don't. They knew I try hard to eat a healthful diet and they know I exercise. And they also know that I come from a long line of heavyset people.

So if my family doesn't, strangers should not.

But anyway: I can't care about the dress I might buy bring "charcoal" or "manatee gray." Actually, "manatee gray" makes me think of the Florida Everglades, and it makes me think of the vacations I've taken there, and that makes me happy. It makes me think of going out for walks on the boardwalk and seeing roseate spoonbills and eating Key lime pie....it doesn't make me think, "Oh, someone is trying to demean me because of my weight." So yeah, whatever snarky little intern thought that might be a funny thing to do - meh, doesn't get my goat.

Just....struggling.

I know bad crap is always going down in the world, but last week just about did me in.

First, the reminder that the gap since 2001 of terrorist bombings was probably a lull, the realization that now we may be dealing with CHECHEN terrorists (they were the ones who murdered many schoolkids in Beslan, among other things; it seems the radicalized groups in Chechnya are every bit as evil and perhaps even more ruthless than the Saudi terrorists).If this isn't just a one-off, but a first wave, it's going to get horrifically ugly, and we may see even more losses of civil rights in the name of stopping the terrorists.

And the fertilizer plant explosion near Waco. That's been less played up in the media of late because of the arrest of Suspect #2, but it was still a very big, very bad thing. There is film of utterly destroyed apartment complexes. And schools. And there is a nursing home where, although they apparently got everyone out safely, the residents have now had to have been moved to other facilities all over central Texas.

What gets me the most is that a lot of the fatalities were volunteer firefighters. I have students who are volunteer firefighters here. They go out and fight brushfires, which seem to be the main thing that happens around here. And while brushfires can be dangerous....it's not the same as having the factory you are running toward blow up.

And yet, as awful as that is, it was apparently a terrible accident. (Although there are rumors that malfeasance or poor management may have come into play)

But the idea that we may begin facing what Israel is facing and has faced on a regular basis - I don't know if our culture can handle it. (I don't know if I can handle it).

I just feel like the world is going to Hell, fast, and nothing's going to stop it. There are other bits of crappification going on - my piano teacher is having to retire from teaching and take a different job because of changes in the tax laws and the increase in her taxes. So now I get to try to find someone new who is willing to work with a fairly-green 40-something student. And the crappification of college education continues, the push to make us all Universities of Phoenix with all its attendant issues and problems. The congregation I belong to continues to shrink and I am so not emotionally prepared for church-hunting. And it seems like this is all happening at once.

The ironic thing is, I guess what I said at the table on Sunday helped a lot of people - in the prayer I referenced the tragedies but spoke about how when we go out and try to make things better, whether it's by donating blood or by opening our pastures to displaced livestock (as some folks near Waco did for the people in West) or comforting the sorrowing, that we serve God by doing that.

And I want to believe that.

And on some level I do.

It's just, there's so much bad crap in the world that the BEST I can do is like a fragment of a pebble thrown into the ocean. And while I'd never give up and go over to the dark side, neither can I any longer believe that any good undoes bad. Bad looks like it's winning, and maybe it WILL win, at least for now. And I don't want to keep on keepin' on in a world where bad is winning. I don't want to have to wait for the afterlife for things to seem right again, but maybe that's just how it is.


I don't know. It's really hard for me to work up enthusiasm for what I'm teaching when it feels like the world is going to hell.

What the F, world?

Seriously, some weeks make you just say "What the F?"

Two mornings in a row I've woken up to seriously strange news - first, the fertilizer-plant explosion in West, Texas (not west Texas; West is a town near Waco, which is actually sort of central Texas. Yes, it's confusing if you don't live in this part of the world).

Now the fact that the guys who did the Boston Marathon bombing are apparently Chechens. (And one is dead, possibly was injured by his own bomb.) While that was not expected, from what I've read it's not totally confusing - apparently there is some radicalization going on in Chechnya. (At first, when they said they were from a "breakaway republic of the former Soviet Union" on the radio news, I thought: Russian mafia? Why would they want to bomb the Boston Marathon? But I think the "radicalization" hypothesis might fit. Or these just might be two bad guys who wanted to hurt people for no real reason, kind of like the Beltway shooters, who got off on pain and mayhem.)

ETA: The oldest one is dead. And was apparently named Tamerlane, or something similar. That's kind of like a European person naming their kid specifically after one of the major Crusaders. And allegedly, the family was let in to the US because they requested asylum. Ugh. I think of the old story about the scorpion that asked to be carried safely across a river...Maybe we need to think our asylum rules? I just find it really distasteful that people we let in who were allegedly fleeing oppression turned around and essentially oppressed an entire US city. 

And then there were the ricin letters, and some Elvis impersonator apparently being the guy who sent them.

I don't need the world to get any more weird in this way. If the world wants to get more weird, it needs to get more weird in an amusing and non-harmful sense, like, I don't know, marshmallows randomly falling out of the sky or something.

Some days I wonder if maybe we really do live in a "Matrix," and the computer has got a serious virus and is preparing to reboot itself.

I'll also observe, the afternoon after the Boston Marathon bombing, I drove home, and as I pulled my car in the drive (listening to the news), I said aloud, "It's a good thing I'm not God. Because I probably would have totally smote the human race at this point and decided to start over with a different species." (Heh: "Rabbits! You are the new Chosen People!")

My day so far

1. Come in to an e-mail from a student: he's on a sports team, he missed class Friday and today.

I e-mail him back and inform him there was an exam today and he needs to make it up ASAP. I e-mail him my office hours tomorrow.

Get an e-mail back: "I'm in class all during those office hours, can I take it [over the time when I normally would go home for lunch, as Tuesdays are the ONE day I get a civilized lunch]"

I e-mailed him back and told him that he could, only if the secretary was planning on being in.

2. Got an e-mail from Student Support Services. Surprise! One of my struggling students needs SPECIAL TESTING.

Wow, it would have been helpful to let me know about this more than 3 weeks before the end of the semester. (Granted, maybe the student in question just got diagnosed, but)

I feel like crap today, it's nearly 90 degrees in one of my classrooms and my allergies are acting up. I have no tolerance for being told things at the last minute. I fear repercussions for #2, there are People on this campus famous for thinking we profs are all mind-readers. (Dammit, if I was? I would have won the Powerball long before this, and would have retired and lived off the interest of my winnings)

There's also a week or two of symposium sessions going on, and we're expected to attend at least some of them. Yeah, great, schedule them right at crazy nutso time when the profs are trying to get all their grading done AND finals written, and then get complain when we don't drop EVERYTHING to attend.

That time of the semester

Even with fairly good classes this semester, this is the point where I'm just ready to be DONE.

I have three weeks of classes left, then exams, then I have to quickly embark on some pilot research for what will hopefully develop into a larger project. Then I have summer classes. (The money is too good to pass up, and also, one of the classes is a "service" to the department, as it's one that often fills up during the regular semester.)

But. I have a few people I'm getting tired of dealing with - the person who ALWAYS walks in late, and thus, never gets the announcements I make unless I make them again at the end. The person who is being followed around by Winnie-the-Pooh's little black stormcloud (Seriously - they just come in and flash the doctor's note of the week at me, any more. I have so much back-work for this person - we're supposed to take stuff late with a valid excuse - and I just can't get to grading it because I have the current grading for my classes. And this is the kind of person who goes all trembly-lipped over stuff, and a lot of the time these days, I have no energy for that). One guy who thinks he's God's gift to humor - I can mostly deal with it but sometimes it gets on my nerves.

I've also had a few people come through wanting to drop my Intro class. I am not relishing my DFW percentage for this one....though the people who are sticking with it are mostly passing, which is actually unusual for this class. (And also: I don't think Withdrawals should necessarily be taken as evidence that the professor is a "bad" professor - in a 14 person class, two of my drops were over big medical issues.)

But I'm just ready to be done and move on. I may run out of material in one class which means I'll have to explore and make lectures for a chapter I previously never got to...ugh. I really don't have time to new-prep anything right now but if I cancelled class for a week or more I know it would be a scandal, so I will have to figure something out. I do have a video I COULD show....that would take one class period - I will have to see. I normally don't like using movies as a "professor had no time to prepare" crutch, but this one is pretty relevant and it presents things from a different perspective.

'Nother bumper sticker

I saw this one on campus:

"Gun control laws won't fix stupid."

Heh. I don't think I need comment any more on that.

WTF?

Apparently there's been a  mass stabbing event on a Texas community college campus. (Wasn't this part of the same system - Lone Star College - where there was a shooting a while back?)

On the news they were saying that it was thought it was an "X-acto type knife, like are used in class dissections in biology."

Two thoughts:

1. We use SCALPELS, not "X-acto knives." Those are for graphic design classes, if there still are any where the students actually do physical layouts of things instead of doing it all on the computer. I think I last used an x-acto knife in high school photograph class. (In botany lab, if it needs not be a very detailed dissection, we use single-edged razor blades; a little cheaper though perhaps less easy to hold safely. I don't like dissecting with razor blades but when your supply budget is limited, you do what you have to.)

2. How soon before there's a call to ban dissections because of this?Or require background checks before a student can take biology? (Seriously - I've had a few students in lab who scared me. Not because they were unhinged but because they were so clumsy.  I never had anyone remove part of a finger by mistake but I've had a few people I watched very carefully. I also once had a guy show up to soils lab very likely high - glittery eyes, hyperactive, super-over-cheerful. It wasn't a hazardous lab that week or I would have told him he seemed "unwell" and suggested he go home).

But this kind of thing really makes me wonder: how much of this is a function of the 24-hour news cycle ("If it bleeds, it leads"?) And how much of it is people just....forgetting that other human beings are human and wanting to harm them? I know that mental illness often manifests itself in the late teens and early twenties (we've all had that drilled into our heads, along with ways to 'de-escalate' if things go bad. I hate that it is that way).


I don't know. It seems that the tide of opinion, at least from some quarters, has turned firmly against any kind of higher education, and this kind of thing isn't helping. (I have screamed more than once at some commentator on the tv: "Okay, then. Let's shut 'em down. Shut down ALL the colleges and universities. Good luck at finding a doctor in 15 years. Or good luck finding someone who can design safe bridges. There may be some majors that, in a tough economic climate, don't make a lot of sense to pursue, but good heavens, that doesn't mean that ALL college classes and ALL college degrees are useless. We can't go back to Jefferson's time and all be autodidacts, and we don't all have the brains to be polymaths or the economic freedom to be dilettantes.)

I don't know. I get really sick, really really sick, of working fairly hard as a prof and then hear people totally dismiss what I do as worthless and dismiss me as a lazy parasite.

I know it's not Friday yet...

But my fellow-shoppers at the local Wal-Mart can flip the flip off.

Do you really behave that way in public? Walking slowly, hand-in-hand with your crush, effectively blocking everyone behind you? Coming to a DEAD STOP in the entryway because that's where the newspapers are? Parking your carts diagonally in an aisle? Yelling halfway across the store to ask a question of a family member? Leaving a frozen-food item you decided you didn't want out on a regular shelf so it can spoil?

Forget Honey Boo Boo or Gator Boys, they need to start a Bad Wal-Mart Behavior reality show.

You are all why I would almost rather go without food for a day than go shopping in the afternoon. I had to today, I forgot how awful it was.

I'd do all my shopping at the tiny family-owned grocery near me, but they don't carry everything I need. But I will say I don't feel like stabbing myself in the eye after I shop there.

I don't know what it is about Wal-Marts but everywhere I've lived, people have just been on their worst behavior in them.

so, now what?

This is one of the things that frustrates me about being a prof.

I had a student sign up for two of my 'arranged' classes - a research class and a readings class last fall. Understand that these classes are ALWAYS unpaid overload; we offer them as a service to students but we see no pay, and no credit hours on our FTE sheets for them, because they aren't "full" classes.

Well, he started off the semester, and then he disappeared. Didn't respond to my e-mails, didn't show when we had scheduled times to meet. I was angry: I had loaned him books, thinking he could be trusted! (Eventually, he did bring the books back, but at a time when he knew I would be off campus, and left them with the secretary).

I also filled out the paper work for site permissions (to do research on a couple local park sites) and then had the embarrassment of having to call the managers up and go, "Yeah....I don't think we're going to be out there; my student has disappeared."

Apparently he came at some point and ranted at my chair about....stuff. She said it wasn't very coherent but apparently he was very "down" on the university. (He has a brother working in North Dakota, in the energy industry, who had been pressuring him to drop out and go work with them.)

Well, he never dropped my classes. At the end of the semester, his name was still on the roster. SOP is that people that you have no basis on which to grade earn an F.

Well, today, I get a letter from an administrator, and a letter forwarded from him, asking for the Fs to become Ws because....apparently the numbers of the classes were printed out wrong when he tried to drop them, or something.

I don't know what to do. (I have a faculty meeting today so I can approach my chair with it). On the one hand, it's no skin off my nose to let the grade be changed, and in the long run it might actually  benefit me, because it shows me assigning fewer Fs. (Yes, that's getting to be an issue now: how many Ds and Fs students in our classes earn.)

On the other hand, it irritates me that he apparently couldn't/wouldn't take the responsibility to check back then (or he didn't try to drop at all and this is a CYA thing). I don't want people who GENUINELY failed my class to be able to pull this stunt.And also, I put myself to a little extra work for this guy, and he just flaked. I admit I'm angry and I feel burned - I'm really reluctant to take research students now because so many of us have had flakey ones.

I'd say "This is what they pay us the big bucks for," but seeing as the alleged average full professor salary is $130,000 and my full-professor salary is less than half that, I'm not so willing to say that.

But, argh. I'm in a crappy mood already and I don't need this kind of thing added on top of stuff.

Bumper sticker

I confess, normally I'm not a fan.  (And generally, at least 'round here? People with more than 2 bumper stickers per car tend to be LOONY. Of course, you can usually tell that from the content of the sticker.)

But I saw one that made me chuckle:

"Guns don't kill people. Drivers using cell phones kill people."

Yeah, I had another near miss the other day (but the other driver was texting, not talking on their cell phone). I'm generally not a fan of extra laws to control individual's behavior but I'm beginning to feel like cops should be able to pull people over for texting while they drive. Or, if the person is texting and gets in an accident, the fine doubles. Or something.

I have no problem with lawabiding citizens having cell phones, but when they begin to use them inappropriately....maybe we need background checks and licensing and people who are demonstrably stupid shouldn't be allowed to get one they can text from.

Argh, taxes

I did (most of) mine over my spring break. (Most of, because I'm still waiting on some paperwork having to do with investments. It's complicated. Way TOO complicated).

Two thoughts:

1. It's really disheartening to hear things (like about VP Biden's Paris trip) where huge amounts of (presumably) taxpayer dollars are spent on things that do not benefit the American public. ESPECIALLY when I am having to redo my budget for this spring to account for a bigger tax bite.

2. I think it's time to move Income Tax Day to the week before Federal elections (i.e., move it to the very end of October). Perhaps people would think a bit more about their vote if they had just done their taxes? Or am I being too optimistic there?

I know it will never happen (no political will to do it, especially since it would involve repealing a constitutional amendment), but I remain convinced that replacing the income tax - with its reams of paperwork (if you are someone trying to make money for retirement by investing) and its increasing percentage of bite as a person's wages go up - with a consumption tax would be fairer and easier for everyone. I resent giving up a day of my spring break every year to do battle with a tax code that seems to get more arcane and difficult with every alleged "paperwork reduction act."

I suppose we'll see a type of VAT tax in my lifetime. Not instead of an income tax (which I would favor) but on top of it (which I most definitely do not favor).

Why I would like a consumption-only tax:

1. No damn forms to fill out every spring. No fifteen-page "instructions" in the best legalese to fill out a two-page form. As much as ANYTHING this seems to recommend the system to me.

2. People who work on a cash-only basis (including people like, oh, I don't know, drug dealers) still get taxed when they buy stuff.

3. Savings is not penalized; in fact, people who save and invest are rewarded with lower taxes. The penalty is on people who spend lavishly.

4. Surely, there is some way that low-income people could be given a rebate or some such to avoid concerns about poor families suffering. Or essential items like food could be exempted, but 'luxury' items (like meals in restaurants) taxed.

5. Less of an incentive for people to blow their money on bling or crap. I admit, as frugal as I am, there are even times I look at the rate of inflation and the rate of interest or of dividends that I earn, and I think, "Damn, I should just go buy a crapton of shoes instead of letting my money dwindle down in savings."

6. And okay, I get that  maybe a barter economy or an underground economy might spring up. Is that such a bad thing? Where I have extra zucchini so I trade them to you for your extra tomatoes?

"This is just one of those things..."

That's how my chair prefaced her conveying of the latest request on the part of the administration to us. (Or rather, on the part of AN administrator; apparently everyone's favorite Dean made the comment).

My chair also added, "This is probably because one students screwed up, their parents got angry, and then called the president." (And because, she didn't add, the president's office didn't do as it SHOULD have done, and said, "Well, that's your child's problem then.")

Anyway. The request was, could we now look over the transcripts of all our advisees once a semester and let anyone who is getting close to graduating know? (This isn't a big deal for me as I have five or so advisees, but my chair has 70-some, seeing as she is the main person for the pre-meds).

But this is one of those principle-of-the-thing cases, and I was gratified when several of my colleagues went off on that suggestion.

And here's the thing: it was, apparently, one student being aggressively clueless, their parent, instead of chewing the student out and telling them THEY were responsible for their next semester's tuition, the parent called the President's office. And like any "good" administrator today, they caved.

And here's the thing that gets me: what it's doing is taking yet another responsibility off the students, and loading it on to the faculty and other advisors. So now we have YET ANOTHER duty we must find time to do, students who are, as I said, aggressively clueless get to pass along merrily through life without consequences.

I think what will eventually bring down civilization will not be bloated government, or the coarsening of popular culture, or even (as some conservatives think) same-sex marriage. No. It will be there being a critical mass of people who don't know their anus from their elbow, and who expect to go through life being helped along by the people who do. It's like Idiocracy coming to life. (I cannot watch that movie; it makes me twitch).

Back in the olden days - even when I was in college - the idea was "Here are a series of academic standards; achieve them or drop out." Now, it more often than not seems to be, "Oh, poor kid. You can't make the standards we've set? Well, obviously they are too high - let us lower them for you." Granted, that may be partly a difference between the Public Ivy I attended and the open-enrollment school I now teach at, but I don't think it's entirely that.

The other reason I really don't want to do this is that this will tick off a lot of our majors. The bio majors I get in the upper division classes I teach are, by and large, ADULTS. In fact, and I realize this is anecdotal, but - when I overhear them talking before class or during slack times in lab, and talk turns to "when are you graduating?," nearly all of them know TO THE CREDIT HOUR what they still have to take in order to earn their degree. They're doing it right. In fact, several of my students recently have requested their "grad check letters" - meaning they know they have enough credits, they want to verify they've taken all the classes, and they are on top of things. (The letters are due in in early April, for people planning to graduate in May).

And just as I'm ticked off by the mass e-mails sent to "remind" me to hold my office hours (which I always do, unless I'm sick or have been called into a meeting deemed More Important by TPTB), I'm sure our responsible adult students would be ticked off by us checking up on them and saying, "Hey, you're on track to graduate in December! You need to arrange for a grad check by...."

And I get it: a lot of departments have transfer students, or folks who change their majors, and credit hours can get sticky in those cases. But we also have transfers, or people who changed their majors, and they seem to be on top of it.

This is one of the things that bothers me the most about the modern world. It bothers me even more than having taxes appended to my (very basic, very cheap: no texting, no internet access) cell phone plan so that people who claim to be unable to afford them can have (perhaps) a nicer cell phone than I choose to pay for. Or the anecdotal stories of college kids going on food stamps so they can buy fresh organically raised rabbit meat or something, when I'm making do with chicken. No, I'm more bothered by being told, "Spend your TIME helping out other people who are too gormless or too lazy to take care of responsibilities themselves." Because time is the one thing we all have limited amounts of - and time is also the one thing where we have equal amounts in a day. I get 24 hours; the feckless kid who can't be arsed to check to see if he's close to graduating gets 24 hours. Granted, a certain number of those hours are spoken for: I'm in class perhaps 15 hours a week, I have 10 hours of office hours, I need to do grading and prep and set up my labs and do research and do the laundry and go grocery shopping and go to meetings at church and everything else.I don't know what the feckless kid has to do, but surely it's not as much as I do.

So why, in the name of all that's good, do you take the responsibilities HE should be fulfilling and push them on to me?

The other issue here, aside from the utter unfairness (and yes, I get that life isn't fair, but this is one case where it's especially UNfair) of making a responsible and busy person do the tasks of another person just because that other person can't keep their stuff together: how on earth does this train people to be responsible adults? I refuse to believe that most employers will pat an employee on the head and go, "Oh, you don't know how to fill out a W-9 form? Well, that's okay. We'll give it to Raj over in Engineering and make him do it." Or they won't say, "Oh, you forgot to come to work today? That's perfectly okay. We weren't doing anything important."

At some point, people have to learn it's sink or swim. And I think between the ages of 18 and 22 is actually a little LATE to start learning that, but now it seems some colleges want to put that off even further - push off the hard learning of life-lessons until the working world. And all I can say is, there are gonna be some ticked off students who can't get or keep a job because they're irresponsible. And they'll probably come back and blame their colleges - not for failing to prepare them, but for not finding a job for them.

The one bright spot? Our majors, who, as I said, are by and large ADULTS who can take care of their own stuff? They'll have a leg up over these gormless wonders who have been coddled along all the way.

Fad, fad, everywhere a fad

One thing I'm learning fast is if you're in education of ANY kind (from K-12 up through college), there are fads that blow like the wind. And there are administrators who blow in the wind of those fads.

I'm also learning (slowly) not to freak out TOO much at whatever new inanity comes down the pike at us. (The current one: trying to have online versions of all our courses. Yes, even the lab and field based ones. Yes, even the traditionally low-enrollment ones). I'm telling myself (and my father, who lived through it is telling me) that this is like the IETV push of 35-40 years ago, where it was said that "brick and mortar" universities (but I doubt that term was in use then) would be replaced by everyone sitting at home and watching class on PBS or something.

And don't get me wrong - when it's administered well, and there is sufficient IT and other support for it, online teaching can work well. But just as schools and colleges emphasize that students should not have to face a one-size-fits-all classroom experience (how much we are told about "different learning styles" and asked to accommodate them), I also do not think that colleges should push for "all online" - because THAT becomes one-size-fits-all. But a lot of schools seem to see online education and a giant cash cow - that they can invest a little up front (maybe in the form of faculty release time to develop the class) and then continue to reap the rewards without any updating. (I have heard possibly-apocryphal tales of people at the adjunct or instructor level being asked to develop material, then be told "Thanks for all your work. This campus owns the intellectual property of the online course you developed. Oh, by the way, we're not renewing your contract.")

And while online learning can be a tool in the toolbox - by God, don't throw out the rest of the tools just because you have a new one! But that seems to be what some campuses are thinking about. I know on mine there is a real push to make courses online - without apparent deep consideration of what will work well and what will work badly. (We are getting transfer students who did their first year of intro bio completely online - including lab. I really don't like getting students with ZERO real-world, real-lab experience into the lab....already I get an awful lot of folks who don't know what a beaker is, or why it's more appropriate to use a graduated cylinder to measure a volume of liquids, and so on).

I'm telling myself not to freak out too much, that they can't strap a camera on me when I teach field labs with the idea of "simulcasting" the field lab for online students; that's too ridiculous. And that something else will catch the attention of TPTB and they'll shift to the next big thing.

And that pendulums can swing back. Joanne Jacobs
is noting that there is some "new" research suggesting that "tracking" grade school students (that is, grouping by ability) leads to higher test scores.
I went through school in the era of "tracking." Yes, we knew we were grouped by ability. (It wasn't quite so blatant as there being "gold," "silver," and "brown" reading groups (as per the old Matt Groening bit), but we knew). And you know? Yes, it might suck to be in the lowest group - but having a classroom with a wide range of ability levels means often that the kids needing the most help don't always get it, and the high-achieving kids sometimes get bored and act out. (Or, as sometimes happened in my classes - get recruited by the teachers to "tutor" the struggling kids. Yeah, that helped my popularity a lot. NOT.)

I don't know. I think sometimes we've gone too far toward "let's not hurt kid's feelings" rather than "let's do what's best for the child's future."

So maybe at the college level, things will swing back. I will admit that today as I was doing a bit of sewing, I fantasized about quitting working at a university and gathering like-minded educators and setting up an "Institute," where we could teach more or less as we saw fit, where we could expect a high degree of rigor, where we didn't give as much of an inappropriate level of worry to "retention," and where we wouldn't worry about being everything to everybody (which seems to be a fault a lot of small colleges develop: they want to cater to the online crowd, AND do big research, AND offer small and personal classes, AND have cool athletics, AND AND AND....). And I envisioned us maybe being on or near a working traditional farm, and the students would pay part of their tuition in "sweat equity" helping to raise food for the dining-hall tables....

and it's a nice fantasy, but then I got to thinking about "how would we earn accreditation with just a few departments?" (I was envisioning something like English, Mathematics, Natural Sciences, Classics, and maybe something else....History?) And how would the whole thing work? And how would I get the money to start something like that - how do you even plan it?

And I gave up. It's a nice dream - to run away from the rat-race of appeasing the Legislature (my fantasy school would be private, and take no state money, possibly no federal money), to teach the way I want to, to be my own boss in a way I thought I would be here, until we got the current administration we have...

"College for All"

My thoughts on this topic are not fully formed and I may add to it over the next couple of days.

The "college for all" push has been in place for a number of years. I think part of the problem is that a high school diploma tends, by and large, not to represent what it once represented. College has become the de facto high school diploma in many fields that it never formerly was.

There are problems with this, of course.

First off: I do think access SHOULD be made available to every qualified person. Back in the bad old days, African-American people, or sometimes women, or sometimes even Jewish people, were closed out of attending certain colleges because of who they were. That's wrong and that's not how it should be. It does not matter a whit to me what faith (if any) my students are, nor what sex (or gender) they are, or what their ethnic background is. If they are willing to work, if they have the necessary smarts and background (or are willing to do the work to make up lacking background), and they are not disruptive in class, they are more than welcome.

However, the push for college-for-all means that we get a lot of students who don't have the background - they either came from very small schools in very small towns where the teaching wasn't that great. Or they slacked off in high school (and in some cases, still graduated near the top of their classes, which is sad). And so we get a lot of students coming in who are just missing so much background, or who have not formed good work habits in their younger days. And it's frustrating for them, and also frustrating for us.

Not everyone should have to go to college. Unfortunately, that's kind of what it's become, with some high schools apparently being willing to graduate students who can't do what a high school graduate should be able to do. So colleges are tapped to "fix" the "problem."

But now, some colleges are facing pressures. The current thing we are dealing with is DFW percentages. (That stands for Ds, Fs, Withdraws - not the North Texas megaplex city). The problem is, DFW as it's calculated currently is a very coarse measurement. For one thing, it does not separate out "genuine" Fs (as in: came to class, could not hack the material, failed) from "no basis for a grade" Fs (as in: missed so much class and so many assignments that not enough points were earned by the student for a passing grade).

A faculty member with a very high number of that first kind of F might be cause for concern; however, lumping the "no basis for a grade" Fs in artificially inflates the numbers.

Also, with Withdrawals- some withdrawals, while they are sad situations, are really the student doing the best thing at the time. In my fifteen or so years of teaching as a professor, I have seen students withdraw from a semester because of ugly divorces, a parent dying (and them having to take care of younger siblings), identity theft, serious illness, complicated pregnancy, more job pressures than they anticipated, family troubles, and on, and on - and it seems that the talk about DFW percentages have been largely to blame the faculty member for all of these, when most of the withdrawals I've seen have been things beyond the student's control, and they have withdrawn for what are actually very good reasons.

So I don't know. I don't like being blamed for things that I did not cause, and I especially do not like being blamed in a situation where I would argue the student is doing the "right" thing by withdrawing to take care of life (or ensure they have a healthy baby, or be with their loved one at the end of his or her life). But that is how it looks like it may be.

I guess what I am saying here is that "college for all" does not mean "SUCCESS in college for all." Stuff happens. Sometimes even good students have life get in the way, and if you're pushing people who are already at their limits of coping to go to college, you are going to have people dropping out or failing.

I'm wary that there may be subtle pressure to depress our DFW numbers.....the easiest way to do that is by making classes easier. There's also been talk of "removing" faculty from classes in which they have high DFW numbers (or, rather, numbers higher than other faculty in comparable classes). That bothers me. (Though not as much as it might, I flippantly add: the class in which my DFW numbers are highest - and are higher than other faculty teaching the same class - is the non-majors class, which is my least favorite class, for all the reasons that faculty typically dislike non-majors classes: students from many different disciplines having different expectations and skill levels, students lacking investment in the class (science can be a really hard sell), people lacking background in the field and requiring more remediation than should be given in a non-remedial class).

My DFW numbers run about 15% in the upper division majors classes I teach. That's really pretty good, and in some cases, those are inflated a bit by some unfortunate Ws where it wasn't my "fault." But by the time I get those students, they understand the expectations of the department. They have learned that even though this "isn't an English class," you have to be able to read and write reasonably standard English to survive. And they've learned that fifteen minutes of skimming the class handouts before an exam is not "enough" studying. And most of them take notes.

But here's the thing: pressuring us to make the intro level classes "easier" because it weeds people out otherwise? Will only inflate future DFW values in the upper division courses, until then we get pressured to dumb them down too.

And here's the thing: We're a STEM department. We sent people to med school, pharmacy school, grad school in chemistry.....we have to be tough on the students to teach them what they need to know. I think our "stakeholders" (an educational jargon term I hate) are the medical and professional schools, and also the public who need medical professionals. Saying that the students are our "stakeholders" and we should cater to them to the point of making our classes easier is a bad, bad idea.

The other challenging thing? We're pretty much open enrollment. We're not QUITE as bad as some schools, where I've heard faculty claim the admission test is "ability to fog a mirror, and ability to get a student loan" but we're not a selective school. And I'm mostly okay with that, but I'm not okay with us not being selective and then being told we have to graduate "most" of the students who come through with a bachelor's degree. Ain't gonna happen, not if we plan to keep any rigor.

I don't know. I realize a certain amount of this is panic-flailing on the part of the administration, because of things that are being said in the legislature, and also because our regular "site visit" for continued accreditation is coming up very soon. But I don't like the sense that we may be being subtly pitted against each other in terms of how much we "hurt" or "help" retention. I don't think that would lead to internecine fighting (and anyway, there are too many of us who thing that higher DFWs are not necessarily a problem) but I can see pressure from outside the department falling on some of us.

The thing that really makes me sad in the light of these new changes and these new pressures? By and large, I'm really enjoying my classes this semester. My students are sane, mature, and hard-working. So to look at things handed down from the legislature or the administration and be asking myself, "Can I survive another 15 years in academia, or are things going to get too ugly to keep going?" makes me really sad. (I can retire in about 15 years and get my full pension. I probably have about 10 years of "F you money" (as my dad calls it) still, even given investments tanking - I inherited a lot of stock from one set of grandparents - but I don't want to try living on my "F you money" and I don't want, really, to contemplate alternative careers.

The best case scenario? When the accreditation renewal happens, it goes off without a hitch and we are once again left alone until the next instance of panic flailing. The worst? Lots of people get lots of bees in their bonnet about "remaking" education, and we're forced to do things we hate and that we know are bad for our students.

Because it's cheap and ill-mannered, that's why

Okay. As a Protestant, I really have no real investment in the status of the Papacy. But I also have no objection to it either; I have no objection to some Christians believing a need in an earthly guide like the Pope. And I have friends and relatives who are Catholic.

Obviously, some around me don't share that live and let live attitude. I've heard a few snarky comments or ugly jokes about the whole pope-resigning thing, and I admit, I find myself a bit angered by them.

It's the old "put someone else in that place" thing. If some of the comments were made about a religion that was perceived as a "minority" religion in front of some of these people, they'd be calling HR to report the other person. If someone made similar jokes about gay people or certain-ethnic groups, they'd go very tight-lipped and say "That's not funny" and explain to the person making the joke just why they are offensive. Why is it bigoted when it's said about one group, but apparently not when it's said about another?

And yet, because it's Catholics, it's OK. Because they're not "oppressed." Because they're "mainstream." And because, I suspect, because they have these pesky "rules" and commandments and stuff that put curbs on human behavior.

(Though, how "mainstream" is observant Catholicism any more? It seems to me that many forms of observant faith have to part company with a lot of what our culture is doing and saying these days. I've read a lot lately talking about how Christianity is, in many ways, a countercultural movement.)

But more than that: it's just shabby and tawdry and cheap and I think of it as below these people to make those kinds of cheap jokes. Life is hard enough without going around putting other people down. And it really doesn't make you look any bigger to other people, and I doubt it makes you feel any bigger in the long run. I know back in the days (and I still marvel at what an insensitive person I was for doing this) when I teased and sort-of bullied a kid lower on the "pecking order" than I was, I actually felt WORSE about myself for having done it.

The snark - that glib attitude that only what you think and what you believe matters - really gets to me. That unwillingness to consider any contradictions in your own beliefs and behavior. That screaming over the mote in the other guy's eye while blithely ignoring the beam in your own.

When someone's only response to a situation that is, for some people, a genuinely sad and concerning situation, is snark, I think less of them. It seems to me to show an unwillingness to step into someone else's shoes or to have empathy.

And yes, I understand the whole scandal with the priests. And yes, many of the higher-ups handled it VERY badly, in  my opinion: far better, I think, to encourage the men involved to confess, to repent, to face whatever charges they would face, and to deal with the consequences of their actions. But just because there are some people involved who did wrong, does not negate the valuable work done by missionaries and hospitals and brothers or sisters who teach or serve or....anything that the good people do. Because some members of your organization do wrong, does not mean every member is suspect. But that's how it's become, unfortunately. (And the thing is: if I suggested to someone that by the logic they are using, university professors or businessmen or athletes or who knows whom are suspect because a few of that group did wrong - I'd be shouted down.)

I pray for stability in the Catholic church for my friends who are Catholic. And whatever reason Pope Benedict resigned over (and I'm perfectly willing to believe that it is failing health - The Anchoress noted that he seems like an introvert, and I can imagine a position like that would wear down even the strongest introvert very quickly), I wish him peace and healing in his future days.

One thing I learn as I get older: being kind, not giving in to the snark, ultimately makes me feel better and more at peace with the world than going around spouting off like a perpetual adolescent. And it gives me greater strength to weather the storms that do come.

One quick thought

My main feeling watching all the words being spilled over the Sequestration (which I think will happen, and which I think we will see far less impact of, than is being made off that there will be):

It's not so much politicians ASSUMING I'm stupid that annoys me, it's the fact that they are apparently COUNTING ON me being stupid that gets to me.

What a delight

And I don't mean that sarcastically!

I had forgotten how wonderful it was to teach a class full of mature responsible people, with NO special snowflake types. I realized that this afternoon in lab. The lab I did this week is one that's labor-intensive and has a lot of calculations, but it's not really hard - most of the calculations are just the same thing over and over, and once you figure it out, it's pretty automatic.

But, because there's a lot of data-extraction, I always used to get whiners: "What do you meeeeeeeeaaaaaan we need 100 data points? That's a loooooooot." or "This is haaaaaaard." or "This is borrrrrrrring."

(oh honey. Oh. you are planning on going to pharmacy school? Learn to deal with repetitiveness and things that seem boring.)

And they would bitch at me for being "mean" to expect so much of them. And there'd be that one group, because they were so busy complaining, that lab would be half over and they'd not be done extracting their data.

And that kind of thing drives me bananas. One thing I learned at a fairly early age is that if you have ANY kind of time consuming or onerous task to do, if you just shut up and get started on it, you get done a lot faster than if you spend all this time moaning about it.

But the group this semester? After I finished the pre-lab instructions, they were like "OK. We see what we need to do" and got down to work on it.

Of course, several of the folks are non-trad students, several have outside employment (a couple work at medical labs, one is a relief driver for an ambulance service). And a couple of them are Honors students - so there are some different attitudes in the class this semester from what I often get.

And by sitting down and doing the work without complaining? They got done *early*.

Another thing that made me happy? One group got a little confused on the calculations but instead of going "I don't GET this this is HARD explain it to me AGAIN" they got up and went to the chalkboard where I had written out an example calculation and went through it again - and then they got it! And they seemed pleased with themselves for doing that. Yes. Initiative is a good thing. Come and find me, guys, when you need a letter of recommendation for graduate or professional school.


I wish all my classes were like this. Teaching would be a dream.

There's something about Russia.

So, last week the talk was about the "close pass" of the asteroid (which passed near Sumatra). But on the same day, in the Urals, there was what was first described as a meteorite impact.

Now NASA thinks it was actually a small asteroid

Immediately I thought of the Tunguska event (which now, some are saying, may have been a meteor and not an asteroid, as we were told for years).

Granted, the two hits weren't that close - and Asia is the largest continent anyway, so probably the most likely to be hit, but still, it's interesting.

(And no. I don't think there is any explanation other than "space stuff" that fits, regardless of the claims I've read that verge into conspiracy theory).

On the one hand: big space rock hitting Earth - scary, and possibly fatal for those close to it (and a big enough space rock? Could be fatal to many of us, considering the climate change it could cause). On the other hand, I confess: it's kind of a cool thing. I wonder what can be learned from the fragments, if anything?

(Maybe what we've learned is that we DO need to "sweat the small stuff" - I've seen claims that this was missed because there was so much focus on the "big" asteroid that did the near miss)

(Oh, and I guess we did learn that there are still paranoid, Soviet-style politicians out there: V. Zhirinofsky claims it was a US weapons test. Uh-huh. The president most likely to kowtow to potential enemy leaders in 30+ years, and he's secretly testing weapons over Russia?

(Dammit, maybe we SHOULD be looking into building a Death Star....)

valentine's day

I shouldn't let it get to me; my chances of finding "twoo wuv" now are less than those of me winning the lottery, but still it does.

Some random thoughts:

 - people who have their v-day gifts sent to the office mainly so they can rub their co-workers' noses in the fact that they got something are tacky.

- both the pajamagram and Vermont teddy bear commercials are really icky. They both imply that if you (the man) buy her (the woman) something from the company, you're get a little "somethin' somethin'." And while I don't doubt lots of sexytimes go down on V-day, it makes it seem prostitutey to make it so open as "if you give her a gift, she'll give you something."

- also one of those commercials says, "Girls can't resist our product." Yeah, what about women? Or ladies? I'm not really a feminist in the sense the term is usually used, but got-dang, I'm almost 45. I'm not a "girl" and haven't been one for 20 years.

- the last-minute "desperation" gifts that are up near the checkout lanes of the local Wal-mart are really sad. One year they had cheap frypans (!) with saucy slogans written on the bottom. I cannot think of a single person that gift would suit: a person who loves to cook and is serious about their pots and pans really wouldn't want a $7.98 cheap-o pan from the Wal-mart, people who hate to cook would be offended by it, lots of women would be offended by the "make me a sammich" implication implicit in it. And people like me would just roll their eyes over the stupid slogan. (And I am one of those people who is serious about cooking, so I'd probably look at a super-cheap frypan as sort of a "you tried, but you really don't understand" gift).

- I miss the grade-school parties we used to have, where there were sugar cookies and red Hi-C punch and you gave little paper valentines with punny sayings on them to your friends. That's about my speed for the day.

- Our culture so "privileges" (to use a usage I normally hate) romantic love so much to the exclusion of other forms of love - familial love, friendship, agape, that those of us who may have all those other forms of love but just not that romantic kind, feel a little at a loss on Valentine's day. Or at least I do.

- I bet it kind of sucks to be a waiter on Valentine's Day. Everyone is out at the restaurant and everyone wants it to be "special" and they're more about themselves than they normally are, so waiters probably wind up having to deal with all kinds of special requests and people acting entitled, and then probably some people stiff them on tips.

- I bet it also sucks to be a florist on the days leading up to Valentine's Day. On the one hand: job security and probably making lots of money. On the other hand: having to work 'round the clock and having to deal with last-minute orders.

Hoping for a 'flake-free semester

I hold out great hopes that this may be the one. Because the past few semesters I've had, I really got dumped on by people who were narcissists, or who just really misunderstood the concept of college (it's not, "Professor opens your brain and dumps in knowledge with no work on your part," okay?)

But this semester - so far I've been really happy with most of my students. I had one person who joined ecology late (an oversight in advisement - not her fault) who has totally caught up and actually wrote the BEST project proposal of anyone in the class, despite her having 2 fewer weeks to work on it than anyone else. And she didn't ask for an extension or anything! When I got her into the class, and explained what I had covered up to that point, she was all, "Thank you for helping me. I will get that proposal done on time." And she did.

And I have several other outstanding students in my other classes. So I'm very hopeful.

Any time what I see as the slide-into-Idiocracy seems to be checked a little bit, I am hopeful. Maybe there is a cohort of people out there who are more about just buckling down and getting stuff done than they are about whining about whatever they have to do - or finding the quickest and probably worst way to do it.

I've said before it's the 20 to 30 percent who really give a damn and are trying to better their lot in life that I am teaching for - not the 10 percent or so who seem mainly wanting to cheat their way through life, or the people who are willing to do things as half-assedly as they can get by with in order to get back to having "fun" faster. I teach for the people who have a sense of purpose and who can see the satisfaction and, yes, even "fun" in hard work and in learning things. And it seems like I have a critical mass of those people this semester, and that makes my work so much easier and so much more pleasant.

I think smaller schools like mine maybe DO get a bigger percentage of people who don't take their education for granted; we have a lot of first-generation folks and while some of them may be a bit unclear on certain concepts, they also often feel like they have the honor of their families riding on them, so they will pull up by their bootstraps and do what needs to be done. And we get a LOT of non-trad students, and they are mostly wonderful, because they have a perspective on life (doing poorly on a quiz is not the end of the world) but also have greater time-management skills and a greater sense of personal responsibility (doing poorly on a quiz doesn't mean the prof screwed them over; it means they didn't study hard enough for it).

(And actually, it occurs to me: if you take responsibility for your screw-ups, rather than pointing to someone else - it means you have the opportunity to do better next time. Saying, "Wow, man, I did NOT study hard enough for that quiz," means, to me: "Okay, then. Next time I will study for twice as long." But saying "That prof expects too much of us and makes the quiz too hard" - well, there's nothing you can do about that other than to whine about it and talk about how the system is screwing you over. And frankly, to me, I'd rather go, "Wow, I can do better next time if I put in more effort" is a lot more hopeful than "I can't win." But unfortunately there are some people who either become convinced they can't win, or who decide that it's easier to say it...)

Right now, I'm doing that very thing. I got a manuscript rejected. I re-read it and wow, I made a bonehead error in describing part of my methods. And there are things that can make it better. Was I pissed at the reviewer for some of the stuff s/he said? Sure I was. And I still kind of am; in a couple cases s/he seems to have misunderstood parts of the study. But I also see how the manuscript maybe wasn't my best effort ever, or how there are ways it can be made better, so that's what I'm doing - slowly working away at rewriting it, and I'm going to submit it somewhere else, and hopefully now I've made it good enough to get published. (But if not: I can rewrite again, and there's yet another journal I can try....)

another reason for me not to Facebook....

...getting "follow me!!!" requests from people you really don't want all that much contact with.

I've found that people who are in sales are often, how do I say it, different in attitude from people in other careers. I find a lot of people who do sales or PR type stuff come off as "needy" to me, or that they "pester" me.

An example: I took my car in last week for some work on it. If I had been dissatisfied with what they had done, I would have called up the dealership and told them to make it right, and explained just what I expected. However, I was perfectly satisfied with the work they did, so I just said to myself, "Next time you need work on your car, just take it back there."

But then. I get a phone call from the dealership asking me to fill out a survey. And I get an e-mail from them asking the same. And the implication is that (a) they will continue to hound me until I do so, and (b) if I put anything less than "excellent" for every category, they will continue to call or e-mail me until they can make me change my mind (or perhaps they will beat the mechanic until I do, it wasn't clear).

And I got an e-mail earlier this week from a textbook representative. The good textbook reps will e-mail me once a semester, essentially saying, "here is my contact information, if you need anything, like a CD-ROM of the chapter art, e-mail me" and that's that. No. This person sends weekly e-mails and now wants me to follow them on Facebook (or friend them, or whatever the terminology is). I don't want to follow them! I want them available if I really need something, but 95% of the time I don't, so I'd rather just be left alone. Just like I don't need my students coming in every day and telling me what a great teacher I am - actually, I think that might be BAD for me to hear that a lot; I might not work as hard as I do, or I might get arrogant.

This bugs me, because as I said, I perceive it as needy: why should I have to give "strokes" to someone for just doing their job? In my job, I only ever hear feedback when it's something negative - if no one is telling me I screwed up I am to assume I am doing well. And I'm mostly fine with that. So I don't see why there's that expectation for me to give all this Positive! Feedback! to people in sales positions. (And anyway, it's not always honest: you don't always have a perfect experience. And why would I rate everything as "Excellent" when it was merely good or acceptable? That's like insisting that students be given As unless they really screw up. I tend to think instead that students start from 0 - from the lowest, most effity F you can get - and work their way up from there. And the ones who really excel earn As. But I'm not going to "give" As just because someone is "nice" or because they always show up or because they sit and pout in my office if I don't.

And I kind of feel the same way about grading the mechanics I take my car to: I'll tell you if something's wrong. The fact that I keep coming back should be evidence that I am satisfied.